Fireside by Susan Wiggs Page A

fact he didn’t ever want to embarrass this boy, didn’t ever want AJ to feel ashamed of who he was or where he lived. Bo had been through that, and the vivid memories haunted him still.
    Bo could afford a new place now. He just hadn’t gotten around to it.
    Studying the kid, he wondered what the hell he was going to do. He thought about Coach Landry Holmes, the man who had taken him under his wing when he was about AJ’s age. Coach Holmes was, in many respects, more of a parent to Bo than Trudy Crutcher had ever been. Holmes had first spotted Bo playing sandlot baseball, pitching to kids on a field polluted with refuse that blew like tumble-weeds across the dying grass. They used old Circle K bags for bases and kept score with a stick in the clay-heavy earth.
    Holmes had seen the strength and promise in that twelve-year-old’s pitching arm, and he’d made Bo his project. When Trudy got behind on her bills and the boys had to go into foster care, it was Coach Holmes and his wife, Emmaline, who took the youngsters home and fed them, made them do their homework and get their hair cut and go to church. The Holmeses attended their sports practices and games with more reliable frequency than Trudy ever did. That had been just fine with Bo, because whenever his mom showed up somewhere, she always created a stir. She wore her hair teased up high, and her shirt cut low. Looks like hers were impossible to ignore.
    Yet despite the kindness of Landry and Emmaline Holmes, Bo felt completely unprepared to be a father. It was probably also why he felt so strangely disassociated. He vacillated between the urge to flee and take no part in this, and the opposing urge to protect this boy at all costs. He’d coasted for years, sending child support even when he couldn’t afford to, because it made him feel like he was doing his part without requiring an emotional investment from him. Yet now, out of the blue, here was a kid in desperate need. And Bo could no longer turn his back on his responsibility, could no longer write a check to make it go away. Well, actually he could, but even he wasn’t that big a jerk.
    AJ was young, and undersized for his age. But his presence here was huge. He was the proverbial elephant in the room. What a mess, Bo thought.
    “I’ll do the best I can, kid,” he muttered to the boy.

Five
    K im thought she’d sleep for a week once her head touched the pillow, but little demons of worry prodded her awake at the crack of dawn. She lay motionless in a room that was both familiar and strange to her. The last time she’d slept in this bed had been years ago, yet the memories that haunted the shadowy corners and the folds of the drapes were as fresh as last night’s dream. This had been her heart’s home as a child, a place of clarity and peace. Her grandparents’ house, where she was the adored only grandchild, had always been filled with magic for her.
    When she was small, she hadn’t understood why she loved visiting Avalon so much. As she got older, she realized it was because here, she was accepted for herself, un-weighted by expectations and unbound by restrictions. According to her father, her Fairfield grandparents spoiled her.
    Kim hated that word, spoiled. She hated the fact that her father had described her as spoiled and, years later, so did most of the men she’d dated, including Lloyd Johnson. “Spoiled” implied something irredeemable, past saving.

    Something smelly that should be sealed up tight and kicked to the curb.
    She exhaled slowly, sitting up in bed and holding the quilt under her chin. Maybe she was spoiled. Maybe someone should kick her to the curb.
    Come to think of it, that was exactly what Lloyd had done. She tugged her mind away from him. The truth was, she was sick of thinking about him. She was sick of her self. Sick of her problems, her dilemma, her life. Stewing about it was simply depressing and got her nowhere.
    She darted a suspicious look at her cell phone. Its